Word: helfgott
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Astrologer Gillian Helfgott should thank her lucky stars. Her husband, the mentally skewed Australian pianist David Helfgott, whose story is told in the affecting movie Shine, has sold out his 11-city North American tour; Shine has received seven Oscar nominations; chaotic though it is, Helfgott's recording of Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto (the "Rach 3" of the movie) is a hot seller, and Love You to Bits and Pieces, Gillian's fuzzy-warm book about how she rescued this lost soul and lofted him to stardom, has 185,000 copies in print. "It's almost...
Alas, much more is lacking. Helfgott, who as a teenager showed much promise until a breakdown sent him off to mental institutions for 12 years, is now scarcely more than a pathetic sideshow attraction, put on display by his promoters and his wife for the delight of the undiscerning, if adoring, audiences who found Shine so moving. This was evident last week when Helfgott, who will be 50 in May, appeared before a capacity crowd of 2,600 in Boston's Symphony Hall to play his first U.S. recital. His handlers dubbed the evening a "Celebration of Life," but they...
Trotting onto the stage wearing dark pants and a white, cossack-style shirt with frilly cuffs, Helfgott, who still takes a daily mix of antipsychotic drugs, smiled giddily as applause washed over him, then launched into a formidable program of Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt and Beethoven. He hummed, groaned and jabbered as he played, his head bent low over the keyboard, his fingers flying. At times he sang a melodic line instead of playing it. Midway through a Chopin Ballade he began picking nervously at his shirt and lost the melody altogether...
...technical performance was wildly erratic, the phrasing disjointed, the rhythms unreliable. Most disconcerting was the absence of any notion of what the pieces were designed to convey; Helfgott played a lot of notes but not much music. The audience didn't mind. Each piece was greeted with a roaring standing ovation, the kind once accorded only to a Rubinstein or a Horowitz...
...DAVID HELFGOTT After Shine's Oscar nominations, the eccentric Aussie pianist's concerts are a hot ticket...